Agthia pushes to make Al Ain as UAE’s leading bottled water brand

The UAE’s bottled water market was worth $845 million in 2013 and it is expected to reach $923m by the end of this year before breaking the $1 billion mark in 2016.

Agthia’s facility in Al Ain can now if required produce up to 72,000 bottles of water an hour. Silvia Razgova / The National

Agthia, the manufacturer of Al Ain bottled water, expects it to overtake the market leader Masafi as the leading brand in the UAE by the end of the year thanks to its increased production capacity and a marketing push.

The Abu Dhabi-listed food and beverage group invested Dh90 million to expand capacity and Al Ain will produce 52 million cases of bottled water this year to meet growing demand, it said.

Last year 32 million cases were manufactured. The facility in Al Ain can now, if required, produce up to 72,000 bottles of water an hour, up from 5,000 to 10,000 previously.

“By the end of the year we expect to become the No 1 water brand in the UAE, surpassing Masafi in terms of volume of sales,” said Fasahat Beg, the executive vice president of Agthia’s consumer business division.

“We are already the biggest producer of water in the UAE and our share of the market is much bigger, which is not reflected in retail,” he added, referring to the distribution of its water across the country’s hotel and airline sectors.

Last year, the UAE’s bottled water market was worth US$845m, and it is expected to reach $923m by the end of this year before breaking the $1 billion mark in 2016, according to Euromonitor International.

Masafi is currently the still-water market leader with a 24 per cent share, followed closely by Al Ain with 23 per cent. Coca-Cola’s Arwa and PepsiCo’s Aquafina rank third and fourth, respectively, according to Euromonitor.

Agthia also launched a new look for the Al Ain brand to further differentiate it from Masafi and based on customer feedback.

“The new look and feel is certainly still centred within a lot of the typical category cues, which can be seen in brands such as Masafi and Jeema. It’s a tough category to create differentiation in and as such consumers can see this as more of a commodity as opposed to a differentiated brand,” said John Brash, the founder of Brash Brands.

Al Ain bottles water from its own wells along with desalinated water from the municipality.

This month the Emirates Standards and Metrology Authority banned all UAE water companies from labelling their water as “natural mineral ­water”.

All the water in the UAE, whether from natural wells or from municipal sources, is required to be treated via reverse osmosis, stripping it of its minerals, which are replaced with the company’s or government’s own composition.

Analysts expect Turkish spring water brands to gain a larger market share once consumer awareness increases about the origins of local bottled water.

They have already been growing in popularity, offering a more affordable option compared to imported European brands.

“The Turkish brands are relatively cheap and from a taste point of view, people like the Turkish brands,” said Natalia Gorzawski, a research analyst at Euromonitor International. “We see it growing, but it is still a very low base.”

Agthia has invested in Alpin, a Turkish natural mineral water company that bottles the water at source.

“The market dynamics are changing a bit, there are more Turkish waters coming in here,” said Mr Beg, who has seen “year over year growth” of the Alpin brand.

Agthia’s consumer business including Al Ain generates revenues of about Dh400m for the company, which reported a 28 per cent rise in profits to Dh160m for last year on group revenues of Dh1.5bn.

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